State Police: Drunk Driver Causes Fatal East Lyme Crash

July 08, 2012|By HILLARY FEDERICO and DAVID MCKAY, hfederico@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

EAST LYME —

— One man was killed and three others injured in a multi-car accident on I-95 South Sunday morning.

Police said a 23-year-old woman had been driving in a 1997 Ford Escort on the exit 72 on-ramp to I-95 South. While doing so, she veered off the left side of the ramp, hit a guard rail and traveled about 100 feet alongside the wire rope.

After steering her vehicle back onto the ramp, police said Morton-Lane's Ford Escort crossed the grass divider between the ramp and the I-95 South travel lanes. The vehicle crashed into a Harley Davidson traveling in the rightmost lane of the two-lane interstate.

The driver, 35-year-old Robert Burr, of Baxter Road, Clinton, was ejected from the motorcycle along with an unnamed passenger after being hit from behind by another motorcycle, state police said.

Burr was pronounced dead at the scene. His passenger was flown to Hartford Hospital for treatment of life threatening injuries.

The driver of the second motorcycle, 49-year-old Dwaine Wilcox, of 14 Dowd Road, Westbrook, was taken by ambulance to Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London, along with his passenger. Both sustained moderate injuries, state police said.

Neither Burr or Wilcox were wearing helmets at the time of the crash, state police said. It is unclear whether their passengers had been wearing helmets.

Morton-Lane was not injured and had been wearing a seatbelt, police said.